Discussions/WhyFormatByUsername

From Exalted - Unofficial Wiki

ie.
Charms>Type of exalted> then BLAM! a list of 13 Usernames which give me no discription of the charm, or even a name.

Of course, I've noticed this is true of several of the Topics.

Perhaps its just me, but wouldnt it be better to organize by more descriptive headlines, while still giving credit due for each item? I would totally be up for helping to reformat the pages, but not without a general consensus.

Theres a lot of useful information in here, and the wiki format is (of course) open to the masses to edit and contribute, but shouldnt there also be Templates or something of that nature? Wikipedia uses a Template like approach and it seems to work rather well.

Anyone up for helping me create some general use templates for artifacts, charms, and the like?

Actually, it USED to be that way! Now we go SolarCharms > SolarMeleeCharms > Telgar's Charms. Which is much better. There IS still some sorting needed, like HearthStones. But we mostly fixed Charms and Artifacts already.

But wouldnt it be easier if instead of "Telgar's Charms", it linked to "Charm of so-and-so-and-so" and "The other charm of good stuff". Those would be slightly more explainatory, right?

AND what if each charm was provided in the same format? One that provided all the information needed? :g: maybe i'm just anal.

For example, SolarMelee breaking down into Parry Charms, Attack Charms, Disarm Charms, Essence Weapon Charms and so on? That's be nice, but it'd quickly become an organizational nightmare. - Telgar

I used an author-included header for the slightly unorthodox formatting of the AlchemicalCharms section. It worked in that case, but only because there were very few Charms and very little overlap between authors: there are too many similar Charms written by different authors to arrange Charms by function or prereqs or any of that as it stands. If someone wanted to undertake paring trees to trim similar Charms: first, more power to them, but, second, I think it'd prove outside the scope of this Wiki's Charm section. _WohksworthTangentially, I'd be all over a metadata-driven Charm/etc. depository interlinked with but outside the walls of the Wiki--I think it'd be a better engine for storing mechanical submissions in general, leaving the Wiki for brainstorming, community, and more creative endeavors. I spoke in support of such a thing many moons ago, but I'm only capable of planning, not execution.

Not to be too much of a stick in the Mud, here. But I have lots of fundamental disagreements with one or two authors here. Which is good, and the wiki lets people see both our outputs. As well, I've duplicated some charms other people have done, even if unintentionally. And for me, it's alot easier to say "Okay, you take any charms from Haren's Abyssals and we're fine, anything else you have to run by me, and let me playtest." to my players, than trying to sort it out some other way. Not to mention the hellish charm trees that would result from the conglomeration of all our many varied takes on things, as well as the degree to which each individual author is comfirtable with certain effects. I like it the way it is. Guess I'm just conservative, like that. - Scrollreader

RKMase, you're not the first person to talk about organization. There are antique discussions scattered around various pages, the longest and best example being in the PrettyWikiProject archive.

Basically, the answer to your "why?" question boils down to: by the time anyone tried to enforce any overall organizational ideas, the wiki already had too many users and too much content for anyone to want to go through and totally reorganize what was already here. As well, most of the wiki users are happy with it the way it is, partially because usernames, as Scrollreader pointed out, are useful for both (a) authors keeping track of their content and (b) disagreements.

I think that the following strategy will be most useful if you want to make unified, descriptive indices of wiki-user work:

An approach similar to the one that was used to reorganize the Artifacts page into their various indices: have an index by type of every single Charm, consisting of a description, an author link, and a link to the page where the Charm is located. (I'm guessing that you're not suggesting what Telgar read you as saying -- that Charms be subdivided by function -- but merely that all Charms be indexed by type. I could be wrong; correct me if I am. If you are saying what I think you're saying, then I suggest that the best way to start this if you end up doing so would be to hang Index subpages off the various Charm top-level pages, e.g. create a "SolarMelee/Index", and then list Charms after the Artifact model.)

Do almost all the work yourself. (This is the reason I've mostly limited myself to reorganizing and clarifying the already-existent index pages -- I do not have the patience or inclination to go through every single set of data and relist it, so I just make it easier to find what's already there.) You are not going to find much support for a giant reorganization project.

Incidentally, I'm puzzled by your question "what if each charm was provided in the same format?" and your note about templates. We have templates after a fashion over at FormatStandards. What do you mean by "template" if you don't mean things like those?

"Basically, the answer to your "why?" question boils down to..."
Yes, thats really all I was looking for. And yes, your assumption on my Charms comment was correct.
As for the Templates, again, yes those are what I was looking for. I would gladly "tidy" up and create indexes for all the available content, but as you said, it seems that the current format is a product of the current users, and is functional for their needs. Thanks for the explainations and thoughts.

Just to throw another datapoint out there: There are a lot of writers whose material I just don't read because I disagree with these persons on Charm design. If I couldn't identify their stuff and avoid it, I'd waste a lot of bandwidth loading pages I didn't really want to read! - willows

All right, I think I'm going to go through the FormatStandards now that I've had more cause to actually look at them, and redo them. Do you have any suggestions, RKMase (or anyone else)? Also -- it's evident that you missed them completely on your first go-round around the wiki. I try to make links like BestPractices and FormatStandards so obvious that any new wiki-user can't help but see them, but it looks like I failed. If you have any ideas about where to put them so someone else doesn't miss them like you did, please do.~ Shataina